ASF

This season will be memorable.

One week to go!

GoT marathon on SyFy over here. One season per day, until next Monday.

Just re-watched the first episode. 

30 days to go.

Cannot fucking wait.

'The Proud Ones'

For anyone that enjoys a good movie, and in particular, the Western genre, I recommend this one.

9/10

'Married to the Mob'

6/10

This show has taken a noise dive, in terms of quality, years ago.

The likes of Rick, Maggie and Michonne leaving the show just accentuate this fact.

46 minutes ago, Large said:

Watched Darkest Hour last night, and gotta say that after all the plaudits it received I was extremely bored with it.

Amazed how they made a movie, about such an interesting subject, a complete borefest.

Kudos to Gary Oldman though. He was great.

Re-watched Fight Club. 

9/10

'BlacKkKlansman'

It was decent, but nothing special. 

7/10

6 hours ago, CaaC - John said:

The Longest Day (1962) the original made in black&white, this film and the Battle of the Bulge will never go amiss with me.

Classic, that one. I love a good war movie. Don't know if you have seen these ones, but apart from the obvious classics (Casablanca, Dr.º Strangelove, Gone with the Wind), I would recommend Judgment at Nuremberg, The Battle of Algiers, Come and See and Rossellini's war trilogy.

'eXistenZ'

7/10

'Fast Times at Ridgemont High'

7/10

On 17/01/2019 at 05:09, Mel81x said:

I hear all the being better, weekly releases yet absolutely no data to back it up. What makes you think the gaming industry isn't doing that? Here lets dissect your post once again and pick the parts that are possibly fabricated since my assumption is you don't play games as much anymore.

innovation - Lets talk innovation. I guess when you look at the last twenty years we've seen growing narratives in games, innovative game mechanics like the ones used on the new Odyssey game from Nintendo, Open world reach like we have on the new Red Dead Redemption, Action-Story mix like on the new Wolfenstein, Brutal rail mission mode system with enemy improvement on the new Doom, Crytek and all their fantastic inclusions to the mix of stealth and difficulty. But hey I guess someone like you would be content with playing a MGS game like the first Solid one sitting back and thinking "oh hes never going to outdo himself" when he did less than 20 years later with Snake Eater, then he took it one step further with the Phantom Pain as well. Looking at games over the last twenty years and thinking man they've milked it with stuff made in the late 90s is once again a myopic view but I am slowly realizing that's the kind of person I am talking to. Try games like Persona 5, Limbo, Bioshock, Portal 2, Little Big Planet, etc and tell me there's no innovation, I'd put money on it that you can't. I won't even get into the fighting game genre which has seen the most innovation in game mechanics over the last 20 years.

games being made for players - Now I know you're trolling. Once of the best innovations the industry has had over the last 10 years is player inclusion via group gaming, MMORPGs and cross-functional play. These are designed to engage players and give them the ability to branch out and play the game as they see fit. Open world games (as stated above) have grown to a scale that people couldn't perceive 20 years ago. You think Fortnite isn't a game for players? You think games like GoW, Zelda, etc aren't for players? 

challenging games (not friendly user) - I guess you haven't picked up a copy of NiOh or Dark Souls? Well if you had then this statement would be moot. Ever played Gaiden on Ninja mode? If you think that's user friendly then your definition of user friendly must be wanting to snap your controller in half. Ever played a Guilty Gear game? Probably not. Ever played a team sport game and engaged with another player who just gave you the beating of your life even though you've got a great handle on the mechanics? Guess not. Tetris can be challenging if you want it to be so I don't get this challenging game concept what and odd thing to say. Console and PC gaming hasn't really aged improperly what you're probably speaking to is Mobile gaming which is a cluster-fuck in itself and if it went away I wouldn't be upset at all but it is for a demographic I don't belong to so being angry about it is moot.

lack of greed - I suppose you're talking about companies that had micro-reach and hence they couldn't really be classified as greedy because they weren't reaching as many customers? It's a business and if you think they aren't in it for money and just for creative acclaim then that is the most delusional statement I have ever heard from a gamer/person in my life. Platform dispersion is heavy these days and there are companies out there making games for a pittance which are great games on platforms like Steam which do gain mass following. The flipside of this coin is that you have companies like EA which get all the spotlight (guessing thats where you're basing your entire view on the industry from not actually picking up a game and playing it) so its quite natural that couch surfers come with this view to the table. Micro-transactions are the new in-thing to hate and I don't like them just as much as the next person but is every single game out there riddled with this problem? No. 

"Feel free to keep thinking things are better in the present. It has gotten worse and will only continue to do so, while people such as yourself keep buying and feeding the greedy companies, who will continue to shit on the players." and then there's this. Thanks for telling me how I should be thinking about the gaming industry and that I am somehow feeding a greed-crazed engine when you're talking hypothetically about how its gotten worse without actually having played any games to make that clear statement. Are there duds more than successes? Absolutely, its a creative business at the end of the day and this will always be the case. Are people far more educated in their view of games and have companies got a better reach to gamers? Yes they have and I am glad that they do because it forces them to make better and more engaging games which they do. Do I think you're a person who came here after reading a news article without having actually played any games and thereby adding zero value to the discussion? Most certainly. 

If you're so incessant that its gotten worse prove the point instead of regurgitating the statement and we can have a discussion but I'd rather close it here since its quite clear you've got a view on things that will never match up to the reality of what things really are. I play a lot of games in a year since its my downtime/unwind method and I have played a shit tonne of games since the late 80s to know this is only getting better not worse. 

Mel, I used to think that you were a decent poster, but perhaps I was wrong, because now you're looking like you're not a very smart guy. So let me put this to you, like I would to a 5 year-old.

You don't need to make an assumption about the fact that I don't play video games anymore, because I said it clearly in my first post of January 12.

First thing I need to point out is that you aren't very good at Maths. The best period in gaming history was between the mid 90's until 2007. 2007 was, in my opinion, the last great year in video games, with diversity and quality titles being launched for every platform. I never once said they milked everything in the late 90's, so you're talking out of your ass there.

But I do think that the best innovations are long gone. Now is mostly copy and repeat of what has been previously done. Which has been a recurring phenom, not only in games, but in other areas of culture, art, etc.

When I mentioned games being made for players I was talking about a product being made just for the player to have the most fun of it, not having to worry if he needs to pay something extra, apart from the game itself, to be able to advance in the game. I might be wrong here, but all these MMORPG's just seem a poor excuse to take a few more bucks from people.

My definition of challenging is not snapping my controller in half. But it's also not having pointers of where to go, what to do all the time, treating me like a halfwit. I've played and have games like Gran Turismo, Devil May Cry, Burnout, so I know what a challenging, but not user friendly, game can and should be.

Of course companies are in for the money as well. It would be stupid to think otherwise. But there's a reasonable limit and I think that one has been surpassed for quite a while now.

I didn't come here after reading a news article. I still follow video games news and discuss it with people who are still gamers to this day. And they, the same as I, feel the same way I do. I'm sure there are a lot of people who want to play this high tech games that come out, but the magic is lost and nothing you say or think will make it come back. For someone that supposedly plays lots of games, you clearly don't understand this feeling.

So please, feel free to write another post about how new games are amazeballs or how I'm not a gamer anymore, so my opinion means nothing. You come across as a fan boy, that can't take criticism about something he likes.

On 14/01/2019 at 21:56, Mel81x said:

Hmm, kidding myself, nope just checked definitely not. Like I said, quite a myopic perspective of an industry that grows not every year but every day in almost every facet it has put out there so yes its gotten miles better over two decades, forget about matching itself two decades ago. As for to each their own, fair point not even a debate there but now I am curious about what exactly was so great almost two decades ago that is eternally lost to the industry today?

That's an overly optimistic view of the present gaming industry. Growing/being bigger doesn't mean being better. You only have to look at the cinema industry. It's bigger and making more money than in any other era before, and it's definitely not better than in the past. The quality has diminished and the same has happened with video games.

What made games better 15/20 years ago was innovation, games being made for players, challenging games (not friendly user), lack of greed. You had quality releases in a monthly rate, sometimes even weekly, for all platforms. One game, newly released, was pricey, so quality was important. Obviously, there was crap being made like you always have, but you could feel the care developers had while making a new game. The end product mattered, because us, the players, mattered. 

Feel free to keep thinking things are better in the present. It has gotten worse and will only continue to do so, while people such as yourself keep buying and feeding the greedy companies, who will continue to shit on the players.

On 14/01/2019 at 20:18, Cicero said:

One of the better animated films out there. Amazed you didn't think so. 

I thought it was a bit outdated. One of those movies that didn't aged well.

Add the fact that I had already seen the same story portrayed in The Ten Commandments, and there you have why I didn't rate it so highly.

'The Prince of Egypt'

5/10

'Insyriated'

4/10

'The Quiet American'

7/10

On 13/01/2019 at 04:54, Mel81x said:

Think that's a bit myopic if you ask me honestly. MGS: Phantom Pain is a masterpiece in a long line of excellent games directed by Kojima. FF has taken a funny turn for the worse and I do agree that they need to stop being more action oriented and go back to RPG mode but lets face it they are just going with whatever the latest trend is and Square is probably never going to change their stance there. 

The new God of War didn't tone down the violence it just used it far more effectively and has a story that made it win GOTY just for the mere fact that you aren't going around like the hack-and-slash days but have to actually plan the attack or you'd lose terribly. I think anyone that played it will also tell you that it was one of the better games of the last five years given how everyone is now moving these games to a more story driven system with very little in terms of action/adventure. Call of Duty and every other FPS perfectly matches what you're talking about in the fact that there is zero creativity and its just a grind to the finish but as I stated before thats where the industry is going with those games and companies realize thats what they have to do to get there.

As far as the comment of there aren't any real top games out there I totally disagree, we've moved past boxed systems in open-worlds, corridors have become far harder to traverse and the idea that a game has to run on rails and be non-explorable is dead. Look at titles like Red Dead Redemption, Last of Us (i cannot re-iterate how great this title is),  Resident Evil 7, Doom, Limbo, Nier: Automata, Horizon:Zero Dawn, Wolfenstein II, Cuphead, Nioh, Persona, Hollow Knight, Dead Cells, Monster Hunter, Spiderman, Assasins Creed, Octopath, The new Tomb Raider series, etc and the innovation and creativity is hardly dead. And that's just from the last two years alone, mind you all the games I have listed don't require microtrans to get the full experience out of them and are playable as-is so I don't get the statement of there aren't any top games from famous franchises anymore. They are there it just depends on what you're looking for and if it fits into how you like to game. I can't stand FPS games because they get grindy and non-innovative at a point so I stay away and for the most part almost every action-adventure title put out by dev shops like Naughty Dog, Santa Monica Studios, Tecmo, Kojima Studios,  etc have been great because they've taken what they were excellent at and morphed it into something both adults and kids would enjoy.

Are there duds out there? Absolutely, it wouldn't be a creative business if there wasn't. But there are some real diamonds in the rough too and not just from Nintendo.

If you think that the gaming industry is as good or even better than 15/20 years ago, you're kidding yourself. But each to their own.

On 12/01/2019 at 05:11, Mel81x said:

Well you're partly right. The monetization component of gaming is alive and well plus they've really always been this way its nothing new, they are after all companies putting out titles and they need to earn money for it. As for the fact that there aren't any real AAA titles out there anymore I think that's untrue and you can get the same experience as playing MGS, GT, FF(Insert version here) with other titles as well like Last of Us, Resident Evil, Uncharted, FFXIII, FFXIII-Lightning Returns, Tomb Raider, Metal Gear Solid : Phantom Pain, etc. It's all really a matter of just choosing the level of gaming you'd like to get into and sticking with it. You may not even choose to buy a DLC or go further than the story if you really just want to stop there and it provides a lush and rich gaming experience that in some ways actually trumps what we grew up playing (hard to believe I know).

Where I completely agree with you is this weird microtransaction world the gaming industry adopted and I blame the money-minded-bastards at EA for starting this whole mess. I don't mind paying for a DLC if its reasonable but to make money they way they do is stupid and kills the joy of gaming.

There aren't really top games from famous franchises anymore, except perhaps for the Mario games.

MSG should have ended with Guns of Patriots. I read that the last one involves another dimension and zombies (what??). FF went from the classic RPG game play to an action game with FFXV, shitting on the series legacy. The last Gran Turismo was a flop. Even God of War seems to have toned down from it's gore. I'm sure, to please the PC cult of today.

The industry has no ideas and proof of that is the countless of remastered versions, of past classics.

On 12/01/2019 at 19:16, Bluebird Hewitt said:

I felt the same way a couple of years ago (though I had one or two issues at the time). Basically didn't feel like playing many games at all due to a mixture of the bullshit you mentioned above and games just simply not being fun.

Thankfully, when I decided to play Yakuza 0, that gave me the buzz again.

As for me, think I've pretty much finished Smash Bros Ultimate in terms of getting the fighters and completing World of Light, so looking to start Red Dead 2 next.

The only thing the gaming industry does today, apart from fleecing money with nonsense out of the players, is launching remastered versions, first for the PS3/360, then for the PS4/XBO.

They can fuck right off.

'Bitter Moon'

7.5/10

'The Eagle has Landed'

7.5/10

'Las Brujas de Zugarramurdi'

I cried of laughter watching this one. Funniest movie I've seen in a while.

8/10. Just because of the entertainment value. 

It's been a good six years, since I last played a video game. The last one I played was Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. 

Since then, I got disconnected from them. 

I decided to read some of the threads in this section, to see what kind of games people were playing nowadays, and, I must say, I'm saddened by the actual state of video gaming. 

What happened to just buy a game, for 50/60 Euros, and be able to play that game to it's full, without having to spend another cent in bullshit, like DLC?

Microtransactions? What the fuck is this? 

Playing video games was an important part of my youth. I spent countless of hours playing true classics like Metal Gear Solid, Gran Turismo or Final Fantasy X. 

Watching the actual state of affairs, I'm kind of glad I left the video gaming world. I prefer to keep the good memories I have of it, rather than participate in a business where the customer/player is not the main target anymore, instead, the main goal is just feeding the pure greed of the producers. 

10 hours ago, Rick said:

I, Daniel Blake - 9/10 

Million Dollar Baby - 9/10

Many tears shed yesterday with these two.

Two brilliant movies right there.

I, Daniel Blake is heartbreaking.

8 hours ago, Harry said:

It's better if you go in with lower expectations. Strange and quirky movie. Odd in a unique way. Like napoleon dynamite. 

Napoleon Dynamite is proper shite. One of the most annoying movies, with one of the most annoying characters ever.

15 hours ago, Fairy In Boots said:

My 2018 post of the year right there. Happy new year Bud 

A Star is Born 7.5/10

Really good actually, iy Lost a bit of steam around about 1hr 20 in for 10 mins but on the whole quite good. Also I don’t care I’d absolutely smash gaga 

 

Happy new year, mate.

'The Parallax View'

8/10

'Wonder'

7.5/10

'Scarecrow'

6/10

'Pacific Rim: Uprising'

3/10

'Thinner'

5/10

'Broken Flowers'

4/10

'Footloose'

5/10

'La Notte (The night)'

6.5/10

'Wonder Woman'

Gets extra points because of Gal Gadot. Other than her, this is quite average.

5/10

'Lady Bird'

7/10

'Ossessione'

7.5/10

Merry Christmas everyone. 

'Pi'

I usually like Aronofsky's films, but this one is my least favorite of him.

6/10

'Phantom Thread'

DDL was, as always, phenomenal, but the movie suffers from a very, very slow pace.

6.5/10

'The Shape of Water'

One of the worst Best Picture winners. 

2/10

'Baby Driver'

7.5/10

'Pet Sematary'

5/10

'Alien: Covenant'

1/10

'City Hall'

7.5/10

'The Florida Project'

Dross. The little girl was a complete brat and ruined the film. Some of the adults were fools, especially, Willem Dafoe.

-/10

'The Wonderful Country'

7/10

3 hours ago, Viva la FCB said:

Love Actually - 10/10 Its that time of the year again where I watch this movie. If you havent watched it Ill steal a quote from a wise man "Its time to nut up or shut up" Its thoroughly enjoyable from start to finish with a bunch of different stories connecting to love and Christmas in various ways. Alot of it is relateable and some is just meant to be over the top silly, some great lines and boasting a horde of accomplished actors. I will never tire of this gem. DO IT.

 

Christmas classic.

After watching this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ECwhB21Pnk., I've decided to change my rating of The Last Jedi to -/10.

'Justice League'

Better than I thought it would be.

6/10

'The Big Sick'

7/10

'Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri'

A decent movie, but nothing special.

7/10

'Black Panther'

Awful. One of the worst Marvel movies.

2/10

'Star Wars: Episode VIII'

2/10

'3:10 to Yuma (1957)'

8/10

'Spider-man: Homecoming'

7/10

'Django'

Awesome. Franco Nero nails the role perfectly.

9/10

'Despicable Me 3'

6/10

'Kongens Nei (The king's choice)'

7/10

'Clueless'

8/10

On 13/11/2018 at 12:40, Toinho said:

Father Figures 

7/10

I like Owen Wilson even though he essentially has one type of character. Was somehow an entertaining yet fairly predictable movie. 

Watched this one as well. Had some good laughs in it. Decent to waste a few hours.

'Coco'

8/10

'Blade Runner 2049'

The time passes by you, while you're watching this one. However, I felt it was a bit 'empty'. Could have been more.

7/10

'The Post'

7/10

'Vera Cruz'

Has Gary Cooper, so automatically the movie gets extra points.

8.5/10

'Wind River'

8/10

'Mother!'

8.5/10